Learner Reviews & Feedback for Blockchain Basics by University at Buffalo

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I used this course as a refresher, so it was not hard to follow. However, I think a beginner could have trouble imagining some of the presented concepts. I would have hoped for more mnemonic aids (like "can you make potatoes out of mashed potatoes") and practical examples (like message transfer between Buffalo and Kathmandu). This would really help memorizing these concepts.

Also, the final project is super easy, but can really cause headaches because of software problems. The troubleshooting provided by the instructors only covers an infinitesimal portion of the issues that users run into. This can also be seen in the course's forum. Hopefully, the instructors will make a more extensive guide or provide an alternative to the virtual disk image (e.g. a Docker image).

Last but not least, I would wish for updates on the course material, since the crypto world is changing very fast. I don't mean recording the videos all over again, but e.g. adding a list of notes after each week like "Ethereum moved from ProofOfWork to ProofOfStake". This prevents the course from becoming too outdated.

Despite all this criticism, I can recommend the course in general. It gives a good overview over Decentralization, Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Some might argue that the video content is too brief and not worth it, but in my opinion they really help succinctly explain the concepts that are covered within the external resources mentioned for each week. Those resources do tend to take a lot more time to cover, but what worked very well for me was the approach of watching the lectures, going over all of the resources provided for a given week, and then re-watching the lecture to completely retain all of the information that was provided. The course served it's purpose for covering the contents of the Blockchain basics and so I would recommend it to any individual that may be interested in the field.

This is a good introduction to the basic concepts of blockchain focusing on BTC and ETH. Quiz sessions are well designed and final project is nicely setup and designed. I got nice return on my time spent in this course.The reason that I gave 4/5 stars instead of 5/5 is because I feel the materials can be a little bit more concrete and technical to convey more useful information. For example, there could be more information about mining, to the extent that student can understand Selfish Mining in bitcoin at a high level. While this course is meant to be basics, but we can add some advanced or extension sessions after each week.

Overall the course was very well designed & well paced and the concepts were introduced well. The only gripe I would have is that the final assignment required grappling with setting up VirtualBox and getting the VM started. Not everyone is aware of virtualization so specific primers on how to set this up on Windows etc would be helpful as the current setup pdf / trouble shooting pdfs gloss over some of the common steps or errors.

I faced a couple of issues that got solved only after several tries and restarts and some of this time could have been avoided if only the tips provided were better explained.

The course is good basic foundation for Blockchain concepts.

1) I think few of the concepts can be elaborated bit more by the instructor instead of directing to reading material. Honestly, I have googled lot of material on blockchain and felt like I was doing the same in this course.

2) There is some confusion on the project and the instructions should be clear to download the ova file from resources and also the naming is not the same as listed in the instruction document

3) Couple of more quizzes on complete course will be good.

Overall enjoyed the course and the project.